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Report 1534
Report #1534 Skillset: Tracking Skill: Pit/Traps Org: Institute Status: Completed Oct 2016 Furies' Decision: Solution 1. Problem: Pits provide a highly effective means of achieving several things: Keeping a target in the room. Slowing a target or group from advancing or moving around an area. Creating an immediate disadvantage for a target or group initiating upon another group. Limiting the ability or highly increasing the risk for 'hit and run' attacks such as gusting or stripping shields. Pits rival the control of a meld, and in conjuction with a meld, make it very difficult to assault an area. They are a key component of the "fortress meta" so complained about. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: Make all traps per-room instead of per-exit. Make pits fire on room entrance, not exit. -- This would halve how effective pits are for stopping someone moving around an area, and reduce the effectiveness of pits in keeping a target in the room. 0 R: 0 Solution #2: Make pits act as a fully different elevation. You can't hit someone in a pit unless you're in the pit with them. Add a new syntax to ENTER PIT. Add new ability in Tracking PULL . 3p, delayed action. If the target is climing or climbing rocks, they are pulled back down into the pit. -- This would turn pits into more of a displacement or maze-like ability, but people could enter a pit to kill someone who doesn't leave. The new PULL ability is because any attackers entering a pit would have to climb themselves to chase a target. 0 R: 0 Solution #3: Add a chance for any attacker that attacks someone in a pit has a chance to slip and fall into the pit themselves. The Tracker who's pit it is would be immune to this. -- This would incentivize and add risk to attacking someone in a pit. If you're unlucky, you fall in, and the person you pit climbs out and escapes, or their team shows up while you're in the pit. Player Comments: ---on 10/3 @ 06:07 writes: Some potentially radical solutions, but I think this needs to be addressed. There have been previous reports on pits before, but I don't think they address the fundamental problems as I see it, thus this report. Some other concerns were brought up to me about how pits and aquamesne works. I haven't fought the combination much in quite a while, but I agree on that. Another milder solution suggested to me: Disallow passives from affecting people in pits. ---on 10/3 @ 06:15 writes: I disapprove of any nerf to this. Pits, or any trap really save Darts, fires only once on entrance or exit, with a 5s delay before they can be fired again. Only way around this is through the use of a Tracker paying attention and immediately Concealing the trap, which takes enough of a balance loss to keep that target from engaging in the group fights beyond maintaining the traps. To note, ANY Tracker, enemy included, can conceal said pits or other traps once fired, and claim it for themselves without needing to dismantle and lay a new one. Removing the ability to strike a target trapped within a pit, aside from legs or gut to prevent Warrior afflictions that would trap them in there indefinately, also hurts the Tracker in question from keeping a target from just running anytime they manage to get their wounds sufficiently high enough to matter in the slightest. Attrition based combat comes with certain such disadvantages for the one that has to rely on it. ---on 10/3 @ 06:19 writes: However, Solution 3 does present an interesting balance in terms of group combat scenarios, as long as Trackers are themselves immune from the effects given their status as the ones that can lay, claim/convert, and otherwise make use of such traps. Causing enemies or allies to have a say....40% chance per attack, active rather than passives to prevent Melders or Guardians getting wrecked unfairly, to fall into the pit as well would keep them from being as heavily relied on in combat. And if Trackers were immune to the effects, would prevent the change hampering their use of such things when dealing with single combat to prevent targets from just escaping as they pleased. ---on 10/3 @ 06:24 writes: That's a good point about Solution 3. I'm not opposed to the Tracker who made the pit being able to bypass the chance to fail. This does mean they can still web spam or other things to keep someone in a pit unless they spend the power on CLIMB ROCKS. That's still much less than a whole group wailing on you. ---on 10/3 @ 06:29 writes: On the point of taking up the Trackers balances. I think that it's very much worth doing that, as many people do, including myself. I think it easily reaches the point where Tracking is more of a primary skill than your weapon spec, which I think shouldn't be the case. ---on 10/3 @ 22:05 writes: I'm actually interested in discussing either solution 1 OR solution 3. I think that solution 1 could be very helpful for streamlining pits, making them far less of a (as Shedrin puts it) main skillset while still keeping them powerful in effect (and instead of competing per-exit, you're just competing per-room). Makes it easier and less system-driven to get into. It also opens it up to other quality-of-life changes (we can examine other aspects of pits in future reports), AND it drastically lessens the disparity between trackers who have the coal artifact and trackers who do not. Solution 3 is a change in the other direction that makes pits a bit more hazardous to use-- I'm not quite as fond of it. It has some potential, but I personally prefer Sol1 of the selections as it gives us the greatest room for making pits more fun for everyone involved. ---on 10/4 @ 04:55 writes: I like all of these solutions for different reasons. Solution 1 seems very clean. Solution 2 could be implemented such that it more effectively stopped running than current pits while removing some of the gankfest element but may present issues with having a new elevation available that wasn't before (for example can a whole party pre-enter the pit and wait for someone else to trigger it?). I agree with Shango that solution 3 should give the tracker that 'owns' the pit immunity to the effect. I think making traps per room instead of per exit could almost be taken as a separate quality of life concern and added to either solution 2 or 3 as well. Overall I have the most support for solution 3 with Shango's modification and with the element of solution 1 where traps are per room instead of per exit. ---on 10/5 @ 22:25 writes: Updates Solution 3 to have the Tracker be immune to it. ---on 10/6 @ 01:00 writes: I don't see solution 3 as having much of an impact. A person who is pitted can be attacked whether their attacker is in or out of the pit. Dropping into the pit themselves won't stop attackers from hitting the target- this means there is no impactful difference in the overpowering advantages that pits provide. If an attacker that "falls" into the pit can no longer attack the pitted person, then there's a meaning to the drawback - but that makes no sense either in terms of flavour, or in terms of strategy. I support solution 1 instead. As Xenthos says, the limit of a single pit in the room that does not prevent exit will open up the ability to balance changes that can buff its effectiveness for niche circumstances, something that currently is unthinkable due to the already overpowering advantages of pits. A super-limited pit (one per room) could even be changed to things like having the entire entourage drop into the pit on entry, or being able to push people into an existing pit, or allowing trackers to jump into a pit with a target and gaining bonuses while in there, or creating instakills based off the pit etc etc. Pits are long due for a re-look at their mechanics, and solution 1 is a good first step to give them a proper place in combat without being a literal pain in the ass. ---on 10/6 @ 01:16 writes: ^--- + ---on 10/6 @ 05:50 writes: That's a good point about how being pitted doesn't stop attacking other pitted people. I'm not sure how the solution would be adjusted to account for that. I do like the idea of expanding Tracking with more things in the future. ---on 10/7 @ 14:15 writes: Support as per above. ---on 10/10 @ 19:08 writes: I support Xenthos and Shango's solutions with 3. ---on 10/22 @ 17:47 writes: Solution 1 only ---on 10/27 @ 22:43 writes: I like solution 1 the most though I'm not sure if it goes far enough and it almost certainly doesn't address the fact that if someone gets pulled into a fortress they'll still land in the pit and have a very low chance of getting out alive.